


[Squawk Code 7600]

by Kitsoa



Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: Acceptance, Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Gen, I gave his mom a name sorry it sucks, Mother-Son Relationship, Parental Guilt, Reunion Fic, spoilers for chapter 42, there are some minor headcanons in here too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 09:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12651294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsoa/pseuds/Kitsoa
Summary: He presented her a mountain. Daunting. Vast. Impossible. She rocked back at the situation given, thoughts numb and sluggish. How she had dreamed of something different, entertaining a sweet reunion with seamless forgiveness. Wishful thinking.[For Birdmen Week 2017: Day 003- Voice]





	[Squawk Code 7600]

“ _‘Mmmah-aahh’_ ” The woman’s lips curled at the corners in an irresistible grin. Her jaw hung open and she nodded in a swell of excitement. Wide eyes were fixed onto her mouth, smaller lips pursing and opening like a goldfish.

“That’s it _Ei-chan._ ‘Mama’” The young mother readjusted her one year old on her hip and unconsciously pried the infant’s little hand from her ponytail with her free hand. The baby grunted behind a closed mouth.

“ _‘Ma’”_ She popped.

‘Aaaa,’ He babbled.

‘ _Mmmm-a_ ,’ She bounced him gently in her anticipation.

“Mmmm,” Little Ei-chan knitted his brow almost comically with a worried pout. He looked uncomfortable and continued to grunt through his lips. This was going to happen.

“Yes!” His mother nodded, intently fixed on her son’s first word. She was giddy.

“Mah!” Eishi chirped.

Emiko Karasuma erupted into a victorious whoop of approval. “Good!! Aahh--Such a good boy.”

Little Eishi smiled as his mother laughed. Taking a moment to swing herself and child in a gentle turn along the kitchen floor. Emiko nuzzled her baby’s pudgy cheeks.

“Ma!” Ei-chan repeated. His mother’s happiness coxing his insatiable joy like an amplifier.

“That’s right!” She was laughing.

“Ma! Ma!” Eishi repeated. His young voice surprisingly loud in her ears.

Emiko felt a hot tear spill over her eye, seized by a clenching thought. She reached her free hand toward the corner of the counter where the phone was.“That’s right.” She breathed. “Mama…”

She glanced at the clock above the door, then to the identical one to the left of it. Same clock, different times. There was a step stool in the corner that she frequently unfolded to adjust the Left Clock. In her arms, Eishi babbled the word between fits of infant laughter.

The smile stayed on her lips, but left her eyes. “Hey…” She said conversationally to her baby. Her grip on the kitchen phone slackened ever so slightly.

“Sanae-san will be so jealous, don’t you think?” She put the phone to her ear.

* * *

_17 years later_

The tv was on in the living room, the game show host’s animated voice was like outdated wallpaper, fading in relevance and positively hideous. It was white noise as Emiko Karasuma kept her hands busy in the kitchen. An aging cookbook was cracked open on the counter and beside the bowls, boxes, and spoons around it was a flyer printed on neon pink. ‘Katsuura Women’s Circle Community Potluck! July 11th’ was typed in generic block font and an emoji clipart filled the page with a small note of handwritten script in the corner.

_‘It’s been so long since we’ve seen you! Come join us! --Ueda’_

Aside from the current mess of a kitchen, the home was immaculately clean. Corners intently fussed over now free from dust with an edge of obsessive fervor in the shine of the washed walls. The Right Clock ticked a cruel morning hour, while the Left Clock envied the steady clucks with a sympathetic tremor of the fragile second hand, frozen in time, batteries long dead. Summer cicadas screamed behind sealed windows while moths banged on the glass of the only room in the house containing a resident.  

Emiko whisked the bowl in her hands vigorously as she walked around a dusting of sugar on the floor to reach the pantry. She reached up for the desired ingredient on the top shelf when a neighboring container tumbled over the edge. She cringed as it bounced off her face and onto the floor with a plastic clattering. It was a hollow sound, nearly drowned by the buzzing theme of the tv program’s saccharine jingle, which seemed to take her foible and carry it along the empty halls, unused chairs, and cold beds within her meticulously cared for walls.

She sat her bowl down. The cream barely thickened, much less 'plump with gentle peaks’ as the recipe demanded. A sigh escaped her, body angered at her 11th hour cooking endeavor. The bags under her eyes were deeply rooted, pulling at the skin of her face until the subtle creases made clear her age. The fatigue knocked. She could almost feel the humorless laugh in her throat. Oh, so _now_ she was tired?

She bent down to pick up the dropped cylinder on the floor, mindlessly appreciating the sensation of the blood rushing to her head and gravity’s rude threat to send her all the way over. The game show host was theatrically going over the expensive prizes at a decibel higher than her remote dictated. The voice was whooping ignorantly about the net value of a brand name treadmill while another insect rammed itself into the kitchen window with an unceremonious thud.

It was on the way up that a sound invaded her careful symphony.

_‘Shuuuuu’_

A sliding sound. Rubbing plastic, groaning in disuse. She knew this house. She’d lived in it it for over 18 years. It was faint, but her walls had long become amplifiers to the hope of life wherever it may originate. Emiko froze with an iron weight in her gut. She waited.

A gust of wind? A clamoring tree? She didn’t have window shutters...It came from upstairs.

She felt her legs yearn to move, to dart up those steps two at a time as she yelled his name over and over. Emiko’s heart clenched with her teeth. Could she bare the let down again?

_‘Mama’_

Her memory supplied a happier time. When she was younger and her mistakes were born from naivety rather than control. He had curious eyes that took in the world, anchored to the one constant person in his life. He knew her by name. How he babbled his way through life, reserved in the company of strangers, but shrill in his petty protests. How he pawed at the world, blind to what he would never have.

_‘’Ka-saa’_

He’d turn to her with scraped knees and teary eyes. Childish whines resonating through the house as she patched him up with a bandage and a kiss. He’d hiccup a little song, stirring her into a protective embrace. She never wanted to let go.

_‘Oka-san’_

He’d cry. Resonant and grating. Distress oozing from his young face as he looked for answers. He’d grunt, squinting until she placed a pair of glasses on his face. A smile. Unable to resist the joy of a new, high definition world. Hers was the first face he laid eyes on.

Eishi. Eishi. Eishi.

Her baby.

She tore through the house fast. As fast as she could. As fast as she _should’ve_ back then _._ Shallow breaths filled her as she pushed to the source of that great paranoia. Pulled into a wicked sense of hope, urged from behind by a potent layer of guilt. Should she have been a spectacle for any witnessing eyes then she wouldn't have believed her actions real-- a fact that brought the greatest shame after all these years.

Emiko’s hand smack the frame of the first door on the landing, leaning against it with the frenzied momentum. She knew better than to hesitate, twisting the doorknob of the long abandoned room with a determined jerk and swinging it open.

She felt the air first. It was strangely cold for summer, but it was strikingly soft. Filled with a fresh foliage scent she had little mind to embrace in her day to day. Her hair tickled her brow as it moved with a wind, unnaturally confined indoors. The window was open, dusty curtains striking the air like the cape of a superhero.

The moon had arched its beams through that window, dusting the dark shadows with a summer glow. It consumed the desk like a yearning, empty stage, glinted off the cloudy lamp, making a bright box on the floor at her feet.

Her hand trembled off the doorknob.

She took a step forward.

Like a fish, her lips opened and closed, hovering between the line of insane paranoia and a desperate summons. She could taste his name on her tongue, suddenly dry with anxiety. _What if What if What if…_

“Eishi?”

Her voice was meek. Unsure. Scared. _What if…_ Ice rattled in her lungs and cramped every muscle into stone. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the window. The _open_ window.

“...E-Eishi…”

Panic was starting to take hold. _What if What if What if…_

_My baby… Oh god I’m so sorry I miss you I miss you_

She cut through the silence with a slicing and shrill sob. It knocked all the dead air from her being and kicked globbing hot tears from her eyes. The pressure locked her jaw into contortions. Her head throbbed suddenly and violently. She tore herself from the hopeless sight, covering her face with her hands. She couldn’t control the childish whine that ripped through her.

It was like that night three years ago.

Emiko didn’t notice the shuffling, the click on the plastic house siding, the rustle of a moving body, the step onto dusty flooring…

All she felt was something warm and looming enter her space, blocking the faint and precious moonlight around her.

Emiko froze, hiccuping sobs clamped tight in her throat and she breathed in shallow suffocation. Before she could register, gentle arms coiled around her. The form was tall. She could feel hot air dance around her brow as she was pulled closer, gentle points from clawed hands pressing against her back and affectionately along her hair. Pressed along a set of broad shoulders, she felt an intricate texture along the form’s chest cleave indents along her forearms. There was a chin that pushed her head into place along the connected neck, fitting her snug into place by resting upon her with a heavy, nasal sigh.

There was the unfurling of something large as massive wings encircled her, resting lightly against her head, overlapping one another like a cocoon, gracing her with a comfortable pressure.

_This... is... real._

The mother’s mind danced, the sobs were choked into silence, but the tears kept falling. She couldn’t help her sniffles as his chest rose and fell below her. Deeper yet lied his heartbeat. Fast. Nervous. Just meek enough to be recognizable.

 Eishi.

He was safe.

The relief came in dramatic waves, loosening coils of tension from years of worry.

It gave her the strength to pull away. Prying herself from her own tear soaked hands, she found herself looking up at a face she’d never forget, but different all the same. Her breath left her. It had been three whole years. He was no longer a child...

He matured with grace, clinging to a boyish roundness to his face while his jaw filled out with more prominence than she remembered. His mouth was a thin line, pressed tight together by the force of some internal anxiety. The shape of his nose, the sharpness of his eyes-- features she saw herself in once had been made masculine even under the worried twist of his brow. He was scared. Of her? What she’d say? The emotions were too great to properly filter. Emiko’s hand rose to cup his cheek, thumb brushing over the creeping tendrils of black that now framed his face. He closed his brilliant red eyes at her touch and ever so slightly leaned in.

“Oh Eishi…” She breathed and her throat started to thicken. “You’re so tall.”

Her son deserts her for three years after hiding a species change and she can only talk about his height. Eishi makes a face-- a sheepish eye roll with a curl of his mouth, reaching his clawed hand up to touch hers in the process. The action brought in a flood of warm joy.

“I’ve missed you. _So much_.” She smiled through the new crop of tears.

“I…” She continued, face dropping as the thought came to her. Words she rambled over day after day, especially in the early months of his absence. She’d cry herself to sleep in an anguish of regret. Clawing her blankets with a death grip and waking to constant reminders of her failures, too late to change.

“I’m so sorry.”

Her son’s brilliant red eyes, consuming and inhuman, softened at her plea. There was a bitter sadness. What was he thinking?

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a good mother.”

Her words echoed his from a time long past. Despite the novelty of the moment Emiko knew the familiarity of that phrase. Lines of worry obsessed with the opinion of others. Meaningless quips cruelly spoken for sympathy before inappropriate company.

_They’d think I was a bad mother if he’s caught being friends with a delinquent-- If his grades drop I’d definitely be to blame-- He should go to cram school like Sanae-san’s boy-- Of course he got good marks, but what about that literature grade..._

Control. Worry. Self-esteem. A twisted image of concern. She had no excuse. Suddenly her apology felt horrifyingly meager.  

His silence inspired fear.

“...Eishi?” 

The Right Clock downstairs ticked.

His expression remained the same. Sad, forlorn-- yearning? She couldn’t place curl of his brow and the shimmer of his void-like gaze.

He curled his claws completely around hers, her ring shifting upon her thin fingers as he moved her hand away. The worry returned. Emiko realized how quiet it was. Panic set in. Was she losing him again?

“I-I know there’s no excuse. But I’ve thought so much about it, about everything I did wrong.” She kept talking. Perhaps she hadn’t made her case well enough. He had to know how she felt. how sorry she was. Shaking, she frantically searched for his tell of forgiveness. Only silence greeted her. Emiko whimpered.

“I love you so much and losing you was… was…” She spluttered.

“... so hard.” Could she not stop the sobs? Her constitution crumbled.

 _I’m so alone._ She yelled in her mind. Words that sought a pity. Words she didn’t deserve to share. Emiko trembled in the permeating quiet.

“You were a good son…” She continued, voice a whisper. A memory of her many nights of self reflection, speaking these similar words as the Left Clock gradually died in the kitchen, clinging to her husband's unreachable world, his time. _You are a good son. Don’t leave me. You are a good son._

His non-answer was a scream. It rocked her, leaving echoes of pain.  “Eishi.” She pleaded.

“Say something. Please.” She could barely see him through the tears. The pressure behind her face was suffocating.

Her son exhaled through his nose slowly. His wings shifted into motion, deliberately unfolding from around them, returning to a relaxed position at his shoulders.

“Please.”

Tension rippled up his shoulders. He clenched her hand in some kind of agony.

 

Silence only followed.

 

The heavy and thick emotions in her throat were pulled like taffy as she waited. Water dangerously beading along the rim of the wine glass.

Eishi snapped into motion.  Move by a desperate pitch for relief, he ushered her over to his old bed, a bare mattress covered in dust, and sat her down. Disconnected, Emiko yielded to her son’s silent urging. It was the gesture one would reserve for bombshell announcements.

Something clicked into place.

“Oh my…” She breathed, lost words escaping from parched lungs. The answer was so sharp and heavy, she reeled.

“Y-you… _can’t_ talk.” How it dawned on her. The expression on his face. Words were flying silently around them in screams of frustration and yearning.

Eishi pursed his mouth, breath held tight while void-like red eyes cringed. Reservoirs of information made oceans between them.

He nodded.

The confirmed revelation seeped through her veins like ice. And she forgot to breathe. Protests, angry and desperate rattled along her thoughts. It was far too loud in the deafening silence.

He presented her a mountain. Daunting. Vast. Impossible. She rocked back at the situation given, thoughts numb and sluggish. How she had dreamed of something different, entertaining a sweet reunion with seamless forgiveness. Wishful thinking. What does she do? How does she pull him closer? How can she reach him?

“Oh my…” She moaned, covering her mouth. The reality was oozing thick, cold mud along her lungs. His voice. Gone. Just gone. His childish babbles, the joys of his first words, those small appreciative phrases-- vanishing into memory. His absence made his voice a storybook, but the dripping truth of the moment made any mention of ‘mom’ a simple legend. A myth.

She wanted to know why. She needed a castle of answers, declared under his rule. It slipped through her fingers with that small nod.

Seeing him before her was surreal in so many ways. His form dance about the lines of her reality, denying long truths of logic with his inhuman eyes and vast wings. All the while he fit snug inside the realm of her dreams, there-- before her, filled with the unfiltered being of the son she bore and betrayed. Now faced with this puzzle. This glass window where she could only look in some kind of sick taunt.

Eishi seemed pained as well, it echoed the heartbreak of his departure. But his eagerness-- the affection in his embrace… it was something she’d never expect from a boy so reserved. It was nothing she thought she deserved. He had changed in more ways than appearance. The mundane curiosity hummed along her mind’s ear.

What was a mother to do? Was it too late to ask? 

Despite the impossible challenge she touched the proverbial cold prison cell bars between them.

“Are you eating?”

Caught off guard she saw his eyes widen. Confusion. Surprise. His mother took it as reason to repeat her concern.

“Are you eating regularly?” Emiko doubted the thickness in her voice would fade anytime soon, but she wished it away as best she could.

Her son smiled faintly-- humored, charmed, nostalgic-- it flickered on a light. He nodded.

 _How--_ She smothered the follow up. He couldn’t answer that. Determined she pushed on with the stubborn vigor she was often vilified for.

“Are you safe?” A question that was as fast as it was redundant. He was there in the flesh was he not?

He opened his mouth, sparing a glance to the ceiling as he considered his answer. He knocked his head back in forth noncommittal.

“What was that?!” Emiko snapped. Paranoia shaking her emotional response. Horrified images rushing in of her son hurt and helpless. Phantoms that accompanied her lonely cries. A fire blazed into existence. A familiar passion born from that innate bond between mother and child. The pitch of her voice rose into a gripe and the words rushed into sound.

“Don’t tell me you’re doing dangerous things!--It’s a miracle you are back Eishi Karasuma. You can’t get yourself killed! I just found out you were alive and it makes everything so much more unbearable to think you could’ve been dying in a ditch somewhere!”   _Or being tortured in some guy’s basement. Or falling from the sky-- that’s something that can happen right? What if someone thought to capture you._ She bit back the rest of her rant, surprised to find a protective fury overriding any prior thought.

He put up his hands in passive surrender. Despite being off put by her the normalcy of her reaction, there was a calm in his expression that suggested sure control.

 Was he always this physically emotive? Did she simply never notice before?

“Are you happy?” Emiko changed her tone. Earnest interest consuming her silent wait for his answer.

A smile so knowing and content dusted her son’s face. It satisfied something long abandoned within her like the warm blaze of a hearth. He nodded.

 “You’re with others like you.”

Not a question this time. A statement-- accompanied by her dawning inferiority in this moment.

Fondness. A nod.

Others like him. Not humans, not her. That contentment was peerless. How steep this mountain felt.   

“Is that… why you can’t talk to me?”

Eishi’s face fell. Pained by a million words dancing along a channel she could not reach, he didn’t answer. This wasn’t a yes or no question. Fear ingrained from years under her gaze, navigating conversations like a tightrope. He knew how she thought better than she did. If she didn’t like the answer... her response was a long casted echo. ‘What would she do?’ His instincts must say. A mother in his memory would prey upon that confiding trust and snatch away the discovered joy with blind ignorance.  

But she was powerless really.

 He nodded.

Helplessness settled. She couldn’t possible understand how that worked, but it was his truth. It was her turn to answer with silence.

In turn, Eishi slid his hand down her arm resting yet again on her fingers, woven with worry. Such casual and frequent touches. It went beyond any norm she was used to even among family. A sign of culture. Difference... But all the more signaling that this was his attempt to paw at the glass between them.

“Are you staying…?”

She cursed her tongue. The question, delivered lifelessly, was spawned from bitter helplessness. Emiko already knew the answer, she closed her eyes.

… 

And she was lurched into motion, shooting her eyes open to her feet on the floor. Emiko looked at her son with confusion. He was standing upright before her, those massive wings of his stretched a little wider, taut and anticipatory. There was a nervous pout on his face that made him look younger and vulnerable, the look he gave as a child when begging for something he’d later mail his dad for.

“What are you…?”

He gave her arm another tug and looked out the window.

“ _Ohh_ no no no.” She didn’t even fully process what he was implying before her mouth moved. He jerked his nose from her to the window again. The curtains billowed softly.

“F-fly?” Her voice squeaked in disbelief. He nodded with a little more vigor.

“I’m sorry sweetie, humans aren’t meant to fly…”

He rolled his eyes, landing his gaze on the model airplane collection over his shoulder.

“That’s different-- _Oh_!”

She was suddenly in her son’s arms, swung effortlessly by inhuman strength. Her stomach dropped at what was rolling into motion. 

“Eishi…” She warned. Her voice shaking as she grabbed onto his shoulders. He raised his eyebrows in challenge. Expression subtle, but encouraging. She groaned.

“...Fine. Please come right back-- _Oh god!_ ” 

Her son wasted no time launching himself and his poor human mother through the window and into the air. Powerful flaps from the massive wings catching shelves of air with ease. He climbed the sky like a ladder momentarily, Emiko’s stomach lurching at every miniscule drop, panic pumping through her veins. She was whimpering even as her son swooped onto a gentle gale, Bernoulli's principle sending them higher and higher. 

She watched with detached wonder as her house grew smaller and careened off into a distancing neighborhood, all while numbly clinging onto Eishi’s form for dear life, his grip around her waist and legs infinitely more confident.

The city at night glowed like stars, pulling her panic into fits of momentary stasis, like a child nodding off sporadically. The thrill made everything sharper. The illuminations below, the roaring wind around her, the content pulse under her fingers. Her hair whipped into her eyes as she tore herself away from the vertigo inducing drop under them. Eishi’s red eyes staring at her waiting. Anticipating. Evaluating her vicariously.

All words were caught in her throat. She couldn’t say anything if she wanted.

 She could only feel. Experience his world. The fear and the wonder.

 …

“This is what you see.”

He responded with a beat from his wings. He never poked above the clouds, she presumed it had to do with the thin air around them. They hovered low, skyscrapers from the restless city skirting in the peripherals.

“It’s… incredible.” Her husband often talked about what drew him to becoming a pilot. Who knew their son would shame those dream-come-trues with such a fantastical display. Eishi nodded in agreement. She took a moment to concoct her next words, understanding the weight of their meaning before they were composed.

“You don’t have to come back home, Eishi. I understand that.” They hurt. She inhaled deep, words lining up like ducks behind her tongue, easy and instinctively. This long awaited moment had come in the strangest of settings.

 

“After you left, I had reckon with so many of my mistakes. Those opinions I obsessed over, my own expectations…  they became so petty and meaningless. You took all of my stupid fears and swept them away, replaced them with _real_ fears. Were you healthy? Safe? Lonely? Were you troubled?... I should’ve asked you those questions all your life…

“Your father and I had a huge fight when he found out. He could barely believe it at first, but when it sunk in he blamed me. I deserved his anger like I deserved you leaving…” Emiko trailed reliving nights of layered hurt. 

“Though, it’s only natural that you’d want to leave the nest.” Eishi actually cracked a grin at that.

“But I want you to promise me a few things… I don’t necessarily deserve this, but in the name of our shared blood I need you to do this for me. Understand?"

 Wide eyed, perhaps uncomfortable, Eishi nodded before returning his attention ahead of them-- as if he needed to watch where he was going. Satisfied Emiko continued.

“First of all please be safe. I am guessing it’s a dangerous world you live in and I just need you to be smart. You are terribly smart so this shouldn’t be hard.” It was too dark to tell but she thought she could see the dusting of a blush along his cheeks and ears.

“Secondly, if you find yourself someone to settle down with or if you have children or whatever, I would like to meet them. Before and after the commitment preferably.” He was both embarrassed and amused by look of that smile.

“Finally… just visit me from time to time. I’d love a way to reach you if possible, but that’s up to you I guess… I will grow old one day and I… want to see you live a fulfilling life.”

He was looking ahead, eyes hidden from view, mouth a tight line.

 

“Can you do that for me?”

 

His trademark silence was definite. Not even his unreachable channel was speaking his response. For a moment Emiko feared a contrary stipulation, lost to their communication failure.

But then he nodded, fast and eagerly. Returning to look away, determined to hide his eyes.

 

* * *

 He sat her down on the back porch, the light from her kitchen project, long forgotten, casting dark shadows on them. She reached for his face once more, encoding his image in her memory with the help of her touch.

“Whatever happens, remember you have a home here.”

His wings were partially outstretched, ready for take off. Beautiful specimens, from the curve of the joints to the point of the feathers. Emiko found herself swelling with pride, values newly reordered. She kept the flattery to herself though, willing it upon the space between them, as he would his words.

“I love you.” She said, holding her arms close, a faint wave goodbye on her fingers.

In a snap decision, Eishi closed in. Embracing her once again. She felt a kiss linger on her crown.

I love you too. It said.

Emiko imagined his voice a little deeper, trembling with that sharp, boyish resonance he sported since the first time he said her name. She would never know. She would never hear her name in his voice again. But she could feel him. The warmth of his body telling her he was alive. The tightness of his embrace telling her he cared-- that it was hard to leave.

Did he forgive her? She might never be sure… perhaps the silence was for the best in that case. Who was to say words could truly summate those pesky feelings? When it came down to the end of the line, a line she saw in imminent wing beats, words only got in the way like they had when she raised him. This on the other hand? Was perfect.

 

The pressure vanished.

 

The birdman tore his gaze from her with considerable effort, forcing himself to look ahead-- _above_ . Emiko felt the swelling shouts of motherly anguish claw at her teary smile. This was it. The child she bore facing the world. Nothing more paradoxically tragic and beautiful. And with a powerful leap and a beat of his outstretched wings, he was gone. His mother, waving long after his form slipped away.

**Author's Note:**

> Brownie points to anyone who can gather why I chose the title. 
> 
> Anywho, I've had terribly complicated feelings about Eishi's mom for a while now. She is remarkably abusive and controlling and I grant her no excuses for her bad mothering. Nevertheless I feel she is a product of poor self esteem and stress coping. Things she passes to her son in spades. While painting her rather sympathetically, I draw on the earnest love that a mother and child share, one that we saw so poignantly in chapter 42. Being a lesson in 'too little, too late' Eishi mom has reasoned with her guilt for years but it is rightfully fitting that she never gets back what she lost completely. That she'll never truly connect with her son again.
> 
> On the flip side, there's a world of mental thoughts going through Eishi's mind that I could only give whispers of. While resting on his yearning desire to reconcile with his mother and the unconditional love he will always harbor for her, he can't help but pull out the receipts. It may be a fortune that he can't speak his thoughts to her. A little paradoxical tragedy for you.


End file.
